Champions Hockey League Cancelled

Last month I wrote about the inaugrual season of the Champions Hockey League and now it looks the fledgling competition is in real trouble. The IIHF has ruled that the 2009 season will be cancelled due to the backing out by main sponsor Russian energy supplier Gazprom. Gazprom reportedly contributed 10 million euros (C$15.6 million) in prize money last year.

If the Champions Hockey League gets relaunched it will likely to have to be with the NHL's economic support. The IIHF is looking to the NHL to help out and judging by previous comments Gary Bettman is certainly open to the idea.

The Oakland Raiders are soaring....off the field

The Oakland Raiders have struck up an interesting sponsorship deal with an Asian airline that doesn't even fly to the US. Malaysian-based AirAsia already has a plane adorned with the Raiders' colours, logo, wordmark and images of several players. Perhaps ironically the plane is named 'Xcellence'.

The make of the AirAsia Raiders plane is an Airbus A430. With the two recent and tragic AirBus crashes and calls for Airbus' to be possibly grounded for long-range flights you have to wonder how smart this partnership is for the Oakland Raiders? It's a very sensitive and tragic story, hardly something you want your brand associated with at this time.

Breaking News Alert: Canadians will watch anything hockey related

Apparently hot summer weather, a Friday night and a dull anti-climatic four hour stretched out affair is the perfect recipe for a major ratings winner. TSN captured the largest ever audience for an NHL draft with an average of 540,000 viewers tuning into see the NY Islanders select John Tavares with the No.1 overall pick.

The Montreal-hosted draft also scored in huge fashion on french langauge sports channel RDS, netting an additional 473,000 viewers.

All told that equates to an average of 1,013,000 Canadians watching. Wow!

Italy wants to go the way of England for its soccer

Major changes are abound in the way Italy's professional soccer is organized. There has been a growing sentiment from clubs in Italy's Serie A - top soccer division to break away from the economic floundering second division Serie B. According to reports this could be done as soon as next summer.

The model of what Italy's Serie A clubs are trying to do is patterned directly after what happened in 1992 when England's top c;ubs set up the Premier League.

So what are the advantages to breaking off and creating your own independent top league? Once again let's look at the case study that is the world's largest soccer league - the Premier League

England's top clubs changed the economics of the game when they set up the Premier League. They were able to keep a bigger share of the money coming into the game from ticket sales, merchandising, sponsorships and broadcasting rights, because they no longer had to cross-subsidize the lower division to the same extent.

They also greatly grew their collective pot by negotiating a separate and more lucrative broadcasting rights contract, free from the constraints of having to include lower division games in the deal.

As a result English football has become the big-money power in European soccer. Deloitte estimated that in the 2005-06 season the EPL's revenues at 1.4 billion pounds were 40% higher than Serie A's, and the fourth highest of any sports league behind the NFL, MLB and NBA). The gap with Serie A has likely widened since as the EPL has just started a new three-year TV deal.
Source: Forbes.com

With the recent departure of arguably one of the game's best players in Kaka who was transferred away from AC Milan to Real Madrid and the lack of high-level talent that Serie A has recruited in recent years, it makes sense for high-end clubs like Juventus, AC Milan, Inter Milan and Roma to reassert themselves amongst the elite of European football with a league that will draw in higher revenues.

The NBA and NHL are making sharing season tickets easier

With the struggles in the economy and the ever shrinking disposable income of sports fans, some NHL and NBA clubs are picking up on trends like fans sharing season tickets and now they're looking to help facilitate the process and learn more from their fans.

The NBA's New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls, and the NHL's Dallas Stars, Philadelphia Flyers and Ottawa Senators will all be using and offering SplitSeasonTickets services to their fans moving forward.

"For years, season ticketholders have shared seats with other fans while the team would know very little, if anything, about these share-partners," said Dan DeMato, President of FutureTix. "SplitSeasonTickets functionality fills that void by helping season ticketholders replace lost share-partners and distribute their game tickets efficiently, while providing sports organizations a wealth of data about these partners, all resulting in a greater renewal retention rate."

In addition to the customer-facing services, SplitSeasonTickets' reporting tools give teams direct and real-time access to rich partner-sharing data, providing instant access to the identities of share-partners as well as the specific preferences of teams' season ticketholders. - Source: PR Newswire

NFL Branding

The NFL is already a beast in all aspects of its business from ticket sales, merchandise, to TV ratings and revenue. Now the NFL is looking at creating a new branding initiative and unifying its marketing efforts behind Grey New York - the NYC-based office of the Grey Group.

To be honest despite the NFL's meteoric popularity I can't recall a defining league-wide campaign on par with say the NBA's 'Amazing' campaign. It will be interesting to see what Grey comes up with for the NFL.

Tiger Woods and MLB working together?

No, it's no a Michael Jordan-esque changing of sports gone wrong. But let's call this what it is - an odd partnership.

TigerWoods.com, the official Web site of golfer Tiger Woods, and MLB Advanced Media LP (MLBAM), the interactive media and Internet company of Major League Baseball, announced that they have entered into a multi-year agreement under which MLBAM will host, manage and operate TigerWoods.com in concert with the golfer's staff. The new TigerWoods.com has been re-launched in advance of his title defense at the 2009 United States Open Championship and includes unrestricted access to exclusive content from Mr. Woods, including Tiger Tips, Tiger's Blog, Dear Tiger and his Fitness Q&A.

Tiger Woods is a world-class athlete and person and this partnership is an exciting opportunity to support his digital initiatives by leveraging our proven state-of-the-art technological infrastructure, particularly in the area of streaming high-quality video," said Leslie Gittess, vice president, business development, MLBAM. - Source: PR Newswire

I find hard to believe that just because MLB has done a good job of offering the streaming of high quality video that it automatically leads to them working with Tiger Woods.

Call it the Strasburg effect

MLB, the only one of the four major sports not to broadcast their draft on TV had a huge surge of traffic on MLB.com

MLB.com, the official Web site of Major League Baseball, announced today that its live coverage of the 2009 First-Year Player Draft drew 332.5 million page views and 29.8 million visitors over the three-day event, shattering traffic records for the comparable draft time period. The total page views represents a 75 percent increase over the 2008 mark of 189.5 million. Source: PR Newswire

The impressive results of the draft were obviously buoyed by the intrigue centering around pitching phenom Stephen Strasburg, who ended up getting chosen No.1 overall by the Washington Nationals. Strasburg entered the draft as one of the most hyped prospect in years, which has been helped on by his super agent Scott Boras who is rumoured to be seeking a $50m /6-yr deal for his client

Biggest NHL Game in 30+ years

The Penguins magical Game 7 Stanley Cup Finals victory over the Detroit Red Wings was a huge ratings winner but oddly drew bit of a mixed reaction in the U.S. and Canada. The Pens win proved to be ratings bonanza in the States as the game drew the largest audience for hockey in 36 years with 4.3 rating and approximately 8 million viewers.

In Canada the game drew 3.53 million viewers, on average the series drew 2.15 million viewers, which was down 7% from last year.

Cristiano Ronaldo's ma$$ive transfer

After two solid years of courting by Spanish giant Real Madrid, Manchester United finally agreed to part with scoring winger Cristiano Ronaldo. All it took was a record $131M USD transfer fee agreement!

Real Madrid's pricey acquisition follows on the heels of the $94M USD they gave to AC Milan to pry Brazilian midfielder Kaka away.

All told Real Madrid just spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in a week to acquire two players. That total was just to acquire those two players, in addition they'll still have to pay their salaries.

So who's responsible behind Real Madrid's loose purse strings? That would be Florentino Perez, the newly appointed president of the club. If the name sounds familiar he previously served as president of the club during the Los Galácticos era. That era resulted in Real Madrid buying Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo (the Brazilian one), Michael Owen, Figo and most famously David Beckham.

So how do they have this seemingly limitless budget. According to a report in the Times Online, Real will recoup their huge transfer spending through a combination of a TV rights contract, advantageous tax legislation in Spain, which theoretically allows them to pay their players a lower base salary and the rich coffers of Florentino Perez and the board of directors.

In addition, their domestic television rights contract generates some £135 million a season: more than twice what Manchester United earn. And they are very good at exploiting tax legislation — originally intended to attract multinational corporations and their executives to Spain — which allows their foreign players to pay tax at around 23 per cent for the first five years that they are in the country.

What this means is that, if Cristiano Ronaldo wants to earn, say, £8 million after tax, it would cost the club just over £10 million a year. If United were to offer him the same deal, it would cost them about £16 million a season (thanks to Gordon Brown’s new 50p tax rate). Over the course of a five-year contract, that is a difference of about £30 million. Source: Times Online

NBA Playoff Ratings Success

Despite not getting the marquee Finals matchup it was pining for the NBA has enjoyed great viewership numbers throughout the postseason. Highlights thus far include netting the largest ever cable TV audience for a post-season game (10.1 million viewers: Cavs-Magic Game 4 on TNT) and the largest ever audience for a basketball game on ESPN (Lakers-Nuggets Game 4)

Nielsen's research group has done a nice in laying out the average viewership numbers by series. Nielsen speculates that one reason for the great viewership numbers directly coincides with the NBA's brilliant "Where Amazing Happens".

I personally believe that the great post-season numbers are a result of the marquee players that have been involved in the latter rounds: LeBron, Kobe, Carmelo, Dwight Howard.

Because when you think sports drinks, you think John Daly

All Sport, Inc., definitely chose themselves an interesting and unconventional spokesperson for their sports drink in John Daly.

"We feel this is a perfect partnership," said Jimmy Piloto, Vice President of Sales for All Sport, Inc. "By providing a healthy sports drink, we help John's efforts with his performance at a high level on the PGA tour." Source - PR Newswire

John Daly and sports drinks? Doesn't that go together like Travis Henry or Shawn Kemp pitching condoms? Or Lamar Odom and and Derrick Rose pitching a healthy diet?

MLB app for the iPhone

Major League Baseball has begun to offer condensed versions of their regular season and post-season games as a new iPhone app for a one-time fee of $9.99

Condensed Games is a video recap product originally launched by MLB.com in 2002 that provides relevant game action compiled in a short-form video -- under 10 minutes. The video highlights the most important hits, pitches and outs of every Major League Baseball game. Condensed Games are made available 90 minutes after each game's final out. - Source: PR Newswire

If there's enough demand for this kind of app which I imagine there will be, it shouldn't be too long before this kind of app becomes mainstream across sports leagues.

Stanley Cup Ratings - Games 1&2

Last year's Pittsburgh Penguins-Detroit Red Wings Stanley Cup Final was watershed moment for the NHL in it's post-lockout existence. It gave us one of the league's most storied franchises going up against a team led by two of the league's brightest talents in Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. the result of last year's finals was a TV ratings boon in the U.S., which gave the league its highest TV ratings in years.

So what does the NHL do for the encore, of course luck into a rematch of the same final. Thus far the ratings for the redux are ok. Here's how the ratings shakedown for thus far through two games:

Canadian ratings - CBC announced Monday that 1.875 million viewers watched the Detroit Red Wings take a 2-0 series lead over the Pittsburgh Penguins, a small increase over the 1.869 million who watched Game 2 last year. Game 1 saw a decrease from 2.1 to 1.7 million viewers. - Source: CP

The ratings in the U.S. are harder to compare on an exact game by game basis because last year's finals started with two games broadcast on little watched cable network Versus before the final four games of the series shifted to NBC.

Game 1 for this year drew a 2.6 rating and 5 share, the ratings went up the next night for Game 2 as NBC got a 3.4 rating and a 6 share. Last year for their four games NBC drew an average of a 3.2 rating and a 6 share.

WNBA team sells jersey space

You know, if I just kept the first four words of the title of this posting it would still be groundbreaking news on it's own...I kid, I kid. Seriously though the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury became the first club in the league to sell sponsorship space on the front of their jerseys a la soccer clubs around the world.

"Under the three-year deal with LifeLock announced Monday, the identity theft protection company's name will replace the "Phoenix" and "Mercury" across the road and home uniforms, respectively. The team's logo will appear above the "LifeLock" on the left side.

The Mercury are the first team to finalize an agreement under the league's new initiative aimed at increasing revenue and marketing opportunities. WNBA president Donna Orender expects more teams to reach similar deals." - Source: ESPN.com

With huge downturn in the economy that's seeing more and more major title sponsors either pull back on their spending or remove it all together, initiatives like the WNBA's to allows sponsors increased visibility and impact in their advertising/branding dollars will continue to become more prevalent.